Former Air Force Fighter Pilot Breaks Down 12 Fighter Pilot Scenes From Film & TV | WIRED

let's go somewhere i can't fly hi i'm christine mel christine served in the united states air force for 20 years she was the first woman to fly the f-35 christine's now an f-35 flight instructor at lockheed martin today i'll be breaking down clips from movies and tv about fighter pilots flares behind enemy lines we're being painted means that there is a sam site on the ground that is seeing you on their radar sam is a surface-to-air missile single missile tracking on it what they're depicting here is kind of a mix between a radar guided missile and an infrared guided missile we need a bigger heap in the fighter community we don't say heat decoys we say flares [Music] infrared guided missiles are typically short-range missiles and they cannot fly out this long a missile will typically burn in this booster phase and once that booster phase is burnt out then that's it if you have a rapidly reacting target that missile won't be able to continue to turn left turn right turn left go up go down there's just no possible way that this missile could continue to fly the way that it does what is it most aircraft have a master caution light and that's just letting you know there's something wrong with your aircraft i don't know of any aircraft that would give you a master caution light if you're being spiked by an enemy radar so that doesn't make sense for this scene at all this airplane climbs straight up which is the opposite thing for what you want to do oh absolutely if you've got an infrared guided missile tracking on you the number one thing you need to do is to maneuver your aircraft and put out flares they hardly put out any flares at all now climbing up high is giving this infrared guided missile a nice blue uncluttered background for it to be able to track on you since the heat-seeking missile what they should have done is stay down low and continue to fly within these canyons because they're hiding closer to the ground so there's a lot of infrared clutter [Music] so the missile never locks on them to begin with and is never launched aren't you going to miss all this excitement out running an f-22 iron man tony stark in his iron man suit outruns these up to 22s initially at least by his acceleration to supersonic the f-22 is one of the fastest fighters that we have out there supersonic is just going faster than the speed of sound back in the day when we first broke the sound barrier it was a bit of a violent event today you'll end up going super sonic multiple times during your flight and not even notice it no way that's a uav what is it i can't see anything whatever it was it just bought the farm i think bogey has been handled sir typically for your uh engaging another aircraft in order to say that it has been handled you would want to verify that it has splashed i.e is exploded and that it is no longer flying they're talking about a superhero in a suit i think all things are acceptable in this case funny how that works huh disobeying orders red tails 11 o'clock it looks like they're moving livestock to me you're always gonna wear your mask your mask is not only giving you oxygen to be able to breathe but also your microphone is located in your mask so if you have your mask drop and you're just talking no one can hear you because there's too much ambient noise in the cockpit that no one can hear you over the radio and it happens in almost every fighter pilot movie where they're dropping their mouse to talk to each other to say something but it's not realistic at all let's go get it where's lightning how are you lightning taking a train from the front like you should have done it's my decision lightning stay in formation in most cases following your flight lead is the right answer because they are typically more experienced than you and better than you in the airplane in this situation the flight lead made a very poor tactical decision his wingman decided not to follow his direction easy easy we gotta take your head off he ended up killing the train so he's gonna be praised but likely he will be debriefed for not following instructions just trying to keep you boys inspired glare dunkirk i don't hear what's sitting ducks in our helmets there's a visor that you put down in front of your eyes that's tinted which will help combat glare i'm on the bumper of course that doesn't get rid of the glare that shines off of the canopy or different things in the cockpit that makes it difficult to see you guys know if it's bright out you wear your sunglasses and you're able to see a little bit better they are trying to cross the channel looking for enemy fighters if i was enemy fighter i would definitely be flying high and try to keep the sun behind me so that i prevent anybody from seeing me yeah he's down for the count you can also do this in the middle of a fight you can pull up into the sun which will hopefully cause a momentary blindness and give you advantage albeit momentarily because you can't stay in front of the sun forever plain chicken pearl harbor [Music] okay we're going left right right right right like we're going right or right like we're going left well now you got me all mixed up i don't know make up your mind the biggest training rule they're violating is the bubble which is how close you're allowed to get to another airplane in the air force in training at least the closest you can be to another airplane while fighting them is a thousand feet once you're done with training that will typically be shrunk down to 500 feet those are some smooth aces you could definitely get kicked out for a stunt like this not only they're putting themselves in danger but they're also risking a total loss of two very expensive p40 aircraft stuff like this doesn't fly most farm boys are grounded pilot language the incredibles indian golf 909 are transmitting in the blind guard disengage there is a frequency called guard frequency that aircraft can use to transmit emergencies transmitting in the blind guard transmitting in the blind on guard was a very accurate statement for her to make indian golf nine or niner so that is recall sign in civil aviation your call sign is your tail number so november indicates that it's a civil aircraft in the military we typically fly around with call signs that are assigned to each squadron so you would hear kong for example kong one one and those are associated with military aircraft mayday mayday indian gulf nine or niner is buddies fight aboard there are children when you say buddy spikes you are getting radar warning indications from a friendly aircraft you would say buddy spiked to let them know that they have locked you up for a couple reasons the most common being hey man don't shoot me because i'm a good guy too there's a few things with her airplane that makes it a bit unusual she does have some sort of a radar warning receiver and or an ir warning receiver letting her know that somebody has shot at her she's able to maneuver this airplane like no commercial jet that i've ever seen it's engaged she does have afterburners on these engines and it gives you quite a bit of extra thrust which is not something you would see in a civilian jet she's doing a fantastic job at being very descriptive with what she's doing with her aircraft and where she is i gotta give her mad props for that play no more teamwork top gun [Music] [Applause] we got a thousand not closure man it's coming right at us okay buddy what's on your mind i love the movie top gun it came out i think i was in fourth grade fifth grade maybe it inspired me to want to become a fighter pilot albeit in the air force and not the navy but it is just a classic airspeed 300 go get a map i'm going for missile lock the term missile lock may be a bit of a misnomer in this case great typically a fighter pilot will lock up an enemy aircraft with their radar that aircraft would have a radar warning receiver that would let them know that they are being locked up that's step one come on lock up baby [Music] bingo they already probably had a radar lock in real life if this were real life okay buddy so not much would change the bandit aircraft would feel a little bit more threatened and hopefully leave which he does bug out your tail is clear big ones but yeah we employ as two ships and four ships in order to provide mutual support and the core element is a two ship you provide mutual support to each other so that if you do intercept a bandit that both of you are together controlling the bandit checking your six for any other bandits and ensuring you get the mission done very common [Music] greetings no that is not typical to rolling vernon above an f5 and communicate via giving them the bird but it does make for a funny story and a great movie poster maneuvering return to base so typically we fly low levels around 500 feet and roughly about 500 knots you can certainly fly lower than that but if you're talking 500 knots at 200 feet your margin for error is very very small in fact your time to die is so low that any one little mistake and you're going to impact the ground time to die is a concept where if you are flying level flight at low altitude your time to die is the time it takes for you to impact the ground if you're in a slight descent and you're 50 feet off the ground going super sonic your time to die is about a half a second but to fly underneath the bridge to try to gun somebody low altitude to be going almost supersonic at 50 feet off the ground that is very unrealistic the part where they show a strike eel getting gun they don't like that they used to fly strike eagles and so that made me a little sad the turn radius of a fighter aircraft we'll call it as about a half a mile they're low altitude so their turn race will be a little bit smaller because the air is thicker however these guys are turning around skyscrapers very tightly in between other skyscrapers which would to me indicate a turn radius of i would call it 500 feet or less which is not something that's accurate at all so kind of silly but very exciting signals sky fighters in this clip two french mirages are chasing a pilot who stole a mirage there are international signals that you can use when you're intercepting another aircraft the intercepting fighter should pull up to the left wing of the intercepted fighter and rock their wings to let that intercepted fighter know that he is being intercepted and then what you would do is fly slightly in front of and turn your nose across that aircraft to lead them to where you want them to go obviously the black mirage in this case was non-cooperative when the president travels we are airborne in a combat air patrol looking for anybody who might be up to no good so we train in how to intercept usually very slow-moving aircraft that don't know where they are the control zone is an area behind your airplane you can kind of think of it like a banner that you're towing behind you at all times closest to your airplane is defined as a reaction limit so you don't want to be too close to a fighter that you cannot react in time to maintain the offensive or to avoid hitting that airplane the two mirages that intercept the black mirage those guys are flying awfully close to this other mirage that they have no idea what this person's intentions are so i would not have flown as close as they were depicting there dogfight skycrawlers you see this maneuver a lot hit the brakes he'll fly right by in flight school we learned the term go up blow up because it's not that effective [Music] so if you've got the air speed to go vertical and you are a defensive fighter then you certainly could but when you do so you are opening up your turn circle because god's g is pulling you down and you're going straight up so you're very predictable and you open up your turn circle so it's potentially a lot easier for the offender to just continue to pull a little bit harder and gun you in the process until you end up dying so i would say it is not very common in real life for an anime film they accurately depicted the dynamic environment of finding another airplane but i don't necessarily think that the moves that they use were the most accurate coffin corner green lantern [Applause] god damn it tom what the hell you need those things f35s what else the times that i have shot missiles in training i shot them against drones given the nature of warfare and where we're headed i think that it's pretty accurate that we'll be fighting against drones a whole lot more let's go somewhere i can't fly what the hell is he up to [Music] they are referencing what i imagine the ceiling of the aircraft um where the drones can no longer operate because of whatever limitation that they have the coffin corner as they reference it in this movie i have absolutely no idea we do use the term aircraft sealing and the ceiling of an aircraft which is also the maximum altitude that it can be flown at could be driven by physiological restrictions or it could be driven by engine restrictions eyeball rules of engagement set ceiling at 50 000 feet roe or rules of engagement are simply just the rules that you have to abide by as you're out there fighting stall now his engine it said compressor stall which by the way is not what the f-35 will tell you but that's okay so the engine said compressor stall and yet it still continued to burn it sort of looked like it coughed a little bit but then as he went downhill it clearly recovered itself field calculation dunkirk jack jewel two 70 gallons 68 gallons for the sweeter they are referencing gallons in this clip which is how all of these fighters measured their fuel back in the day modern fighters today don't measure their fuel in gallons they measure them in thousands of pounds and you have to check your fuel regularly quarter what's your fuel you want to make sure it's speeding accurately did you turn back no no i'm fairly confident it's just the case that there's no trapped gas and make sure that you're checking it so that you don't overfly your bingo fuel bingo fuel means you have to stop what you're doing and hope now or else you won't have enough gas to make it understood conclusion i enjoyed watching all the clips they were very entertaining and humorous in how inaccurate they are in a lot of ways but as far as talking about fighter pilot stuff i could do that all day long if you're interested in becoming a fighter pilot i would absolutely encourage you to do that it is an outstanding career very rewarding very challenging very fun

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: christine grinder mau, fighter pilot, fighter pilot breaks down, fighter pilot break down, fighter pilot wired, technique critique fighter pilot, fighter pilot technique critique, technique critique wired, fighter pilot explains, us air force, air force fighter pilot, usaf, usaf pilot, grinder, grinder usaf, pilot air force explains, top gun break down, top gun examined, iron man fighter pilot, dunkirk fighter pilot, technique critique flying, us air force pilot, wired

Id: YFzJeBbFyl0

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020